The Accidental Impostor
staged by
Playing for Time Theatre Company
in West Hill HMP Winchester
May 2012

The Accidental Imposter is a fast moving farce loosely based on Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Presented by award-winning Playing for Time Theatre Company at West Hill HMP Winchester, The Accidental Impostor has been inspired by Dario Fo ‘s classic play written in 1969. The original play is a farce about events involving a real person, Guiseppe Pinelli who fell….or was he thrown….from the fourth floor of a Milan police station in 1969. Dario Fo has been consulted and given permission for the play to be adapted for performance in Winchester Prison; the adaptation has been written by Bethan Clark with inputs from the creative team working on the show. The adaptation is a contemporary farce shining the spotlight on suspicion, fear, control and misrepresentation taking place in a police station amidst a media frenzy after a suspect ends up in a coma …..but did he fall or was he pushed? The Accidental Impostor contains original music and lyrics. The play incorporates documentary style film sequences which will be used to frame events so that the truth will out eventually.

The Creative Team

This year’s production is being directed by Bethan Clark who has directed the last three shows and will be co-directed by Tom Timms who graduated from the BA Drama programme in 2012. Tom also performed in two prison shows in his first and second year at university and in Year 3 co-directed the 2011 production of local playwright Philip Glassborow’s Soul Traders. Tom performed in The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol in 2010. This production won a Koestler Award in 2011.

The Musical Director is Richard Daniels, former Education Manager of HMP Winchester. The production once again sees collaboration between Playing for Time Theatre Company and LaunchPad Productions, a community film company who are University of Winchester graduates. LaunchPad have made three documentaries about the work of Playing for Time and have filmed all shows in West Hill since 2006. LaunchPad work with charities, local authorities, community groups, organisations and a range of ‘hard to reach’ groups to develop, facilitate and produce films that give a voice to local and wider communities. A recent film Down the Line explores the journey made by families of prisoners and is accompanied by a training toolkit designed for multi-agency professionals who work directly with families of offenders.

The work of the participating prisoners will be supported by 17 undergraduate students working as actors and mentors. Two of this group will take on technical roles as Production Manager and Stage Manager. The work, as always, is supported by the university’s technical theatre team led by David Buss.

The producer is Annie McKean MA MBE. This will be the 9th production staged by the prison theatre company that she founded in 2003. Playing for Time has won Koestler Awards (Stand or Fall by Brian Woolland 2008 and The Government Inspector 2010) and a MacJannet Prize awarded through the Talloires Network which recognises exceptional student civic engagement initiatives. Annie was awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to Higher Education.

The performance dates are

Tuesday 1st May - 6pm
Wednesday 2nd May - 2.15 pm
Wednesday 2nd May - 6 pm
Thursday 3rd May - 6 pm